Well, dear readers, shall I tell you about the 1980s? It is a period of my life I don’t like to talk about, an approximately ten-year slog that almost did me in. But I always believe that good comes out of bad if you’re willing to let it. The trouble was, until the end of the 1980s I wasn’t willing or, more precisely, couldn’t see how any good could come of the bad I was going through. I have told some of these stories only privately but since I’ve been on this tear, this jag, having fun talking about things I’ve done, I thought to myself, “Myself, maybe you should talk about this,” and myself said, “BK, do it, do it now, the time is nigh.”
So, what was it with the 1980s? I thought they were starting off incredibly well actually. I’d had a bit of a rough patch toward the end of the 1970s – I was somewhat angry about the whole Nudie Musical stuff that had gone on – that film should have made me a major player and, because of bad timing and whatever fate was at work, it was killed by the studio that released it for reasons I discuss candidly on the DVD. I mean, I got incredible reviews for my performance, and the film got some fantastic notices (and some terrible notices), too. And directly after its release, I did get a few jobs and got them solely based on my performance in the film. In fact, I got a starring role in an ABC pilot without having to read for it or even meet – they just saw Nudie Musical and offered me the part. Heady stuff. But then I was gray listed when I went public with my displeasure with Paramount – that was, to put it mildly – career suicide, and I only wish that my manager or my publicist had knocked me to the ground and stopped me from doing it. But, at the time, I was so incensed at what they were doing and I had proof and I thought David and Goliath and I was stupid and wrong and it ultimately stopped my acting career cold. I remember reading for a pilot and the producer, Bob Claver, who I’d worked for several times, loved me – didn’t want anyone else. I was brought in to the network and read really well. And then nothing. They brought me back again. I read well again. And then I got a call from Mr. Claver, an off-the-record call during which he told me that I was being gray-listed by ABC and they would not allow me to be cast. And, as wrong as that was, that was the price I paid for being both honest and stupid.
In December of 1980, we’d been trying to get a deal to do The Creature Wasn’t Nice, but the entire deal was predicated on Cindy Williams doing the film. And she would not commit. She loved the script, loved me, but was in the midst of her Laverne and Shirley success and was looking at a lot of different options. The negotiations had gone on for six long months – one day it was close, next day it wasn’t. I refused to jeopardize my friendship with her by pressuring her. Anyway, on my birthday in 1980 she presented me with her signed contract – which meant we were a go. I was ecstatic. What a birthday present and what a great omen for a great decade. After the party, I was feeling great and I walked into the den. The TV was on and they were reporting that John Lennon had just been killed in front of the Dakota. Obviously, like everyone else I was shocked and saddened by it – but it gave me a very bad feeling, as if someone was trying to tell me it wasn’t going to be such a great decade. I won’t go into the history of The Creature Wasn’t Nice – it was a fantastic shoot, the cast was amazing, the dailies were hilarious, and then the editor totally screwed up the film and I wasn’t smart enough to stop it. By the time I had my first screening I knew we were in deep merde. Overnight, I made a ton of changes and the second screening played much better. But I needed another month and I needed another editor and I didn’t get either. Instead they gave me my public previews (as per the DGA) and then took the film away and had it completely re-edited, and not in a good way. I knew the film was a dead starter – it played one engagement and disappeared until it hit cable, where, surprisingly, it gathered a little cult, despite not being very good. Many 80s films shared the same phenomena – kids grew up watching them on cable and they just have a soft spot for them. I was angry about the film.
In 1982 I divorced my wife of fourteen years – for me, it was a very good thing, for her I was the Devil and she tried to make my life as miserable as she could. I bought her out of her share of the house (she moved and bought a condo nearby). I should never have done it. I wasn’t working and the house was expensive to keep up and the payments, for that time, weren’t cheap. I lasted a year and then had to finally sell. I made enough on the sale to take care of some debts and have enough to live for a year or so.
Meanwhile, I kept going up for roles on bad sitcoms and I wasn’t landing anything. I was in my mid-30s and it just wasn’t happening for people like me (I had other actor friends who were my type who went through the same thing). I got angrier and angrier and bitterer than I’d ever been. My attitude on interviews got so bad that I had to stop going on them for fear of what I might say. That came to an amusing head when I went to read for the syndicated version of Too Close For Comfort. They handed me the sides and it was so terrible, such awful, awful writing I wanted to run from the building. I should have. I went in, girded my loins, and read the two pages as best I could. Then one of the producers made the mistake of saying to me, “Can’t you make it funny?” I stood there looking at him and the others in the room. I said, and I remember this as if it were yesterday, “Can’t I make it funny? Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason – NO ONE could make this funny – not them, not me. Here’s a crazy idea – maybe the WRITER should make it funny.” Their mouths were on the floor. I turned and left. And that was it. I stopped my acting career. From that point on, I only did a couple of stage shows that I’d written. I wrote plays, musicals, screenplays. My play The Good One got wonderful reaction and some terrific reviews. There was great buzz on it. Studios were interested. Nothing happened. A couple of my screenplays came close – close, but no cigar. I did direct and write some pretty funny stuff for a cable show called Likely Stories, the show that gave Danny DeVito his directorial debut. I had little jobs here and there, but I was dying financially. I moved several times during the mid-1980s. And yes, I got angrier and more negative and the more negative I got the more the negativity spawned more negativity. I was not fun to be around. I was, in fact, miserable. If you read my short story, I’ll See You In My Dreams, you’ll know what my state of mind was. It wasn’t good.
The only joy I had was when I prepared a nightclub act that I performed three or four times a year at the Gardenia. That was great fun. But then it was back to the dark side. I sometimes found myself on the floor, screaming and railing at the injustice of it all. Boo hoo, poor, poor pitiful me. I had a tumultuous four-year relationship with a beautiful actress – the good part of it was great, but it was very much overshadowed by the bad part of it, which was horrible, and which all was my fault because I was in such a terrible place.
My friend David Wechter was also not working that much, and we formed a production company. Since we both loved poker, one day we drove out to The Bicycle Club, a poker casino just outside of LA. We pitched a commercial, which we’d storyboarded and everything. They didn’t go for the commercial, but instead they hired us to do a promotional video for them. It was great fun and it was so successful that the owner of the club, who was running for mayor of some little town, hired us to do his campaign commercials. This guy was something else, but we helped him be personable, and we won him the election. We didn’t make a lot of money, but at least we were doing SOMETHING, even though it wasn’t what we wanted to do. We made a series of How To Play Poker videos for the Commerce Casino – those turned out so well that they used them for twelve years straight. But none of it led anywhere. David and I did write a script based on an idea I’d gotten in the middle of the night – that script was called The Faculty. We thought it was pretty good. Our agent thought it was pretty good. No one cared. If we’d offered it for free they wouldn’t have taken it.
The decade was nearing its end. I was at the end of my rope. I was living in a little house on Irving, just south of Paramount, where once I was their comedy hope. A couple of friends were producing a very low budget thriller and the director, who was also the writer, was too slow, terrible, and had no idea how to shoot a movie. They called me and said they were thinking about canning him. This was a week into filming. They asked me if I could come in on a moment’s notice to take over and finish. I asked to see the dailies, which they sent me. They were horrible, beyond inept – had an editor tried to cut the scenes together he would have found he couldn’t have – nothing would cut. I said I was available and that I’d do it. They fired the fellow the next day. I was driven to location to meet with the cameraman and key personnel and to meet the two young leads of the film. The director had left about thirty minutes prior to my arrival. I met the two actors, and actually got them comfortable with me instantly. I also bonded with the cameraman, who’d been ready to kill the other director.
The next day, my first on the show, they dropped the little bombshell on me that not only was that fellow the director and writer, he was also the boyfriend of the film’s star, Susan Strasberg. She, of course, was distraught. She would not come out of her trailer. While those negotiations went on, I shot a few little things with the lead actor – filler, really. After my first shot, I turned to the crew and said, “Anyone know what this picture is about?” That got a big laugh and the crew was with me. Eventually, six hours later, Susan emerged and I had a nice talk with her and told her we both had to make the best of a not so hot situation. She was a pro and we went to work. I was already, by that time, quite in the toilet and we had a seven-page scene to shoot. So, I went to the cameraman and told him my plan – he loved it. I blocked the scene, all seven pages of it – all to be shot in one continuous take, with ten camera moves and a lot of business. We rehearsed for an hour, did three takes, and I was caught up and right on sched. We finished the film a day ahead of the finish date. Unfortunately, it was a wretched script and it was a pretty bad movie. But, at least they had a movie. I also wrote the score. I used a pseudonym for my directing credit. I did enjoy working with the troubled Dana Plato – we got along wonderfully, and her performance in the film, especially her death scene, is really good. I had fun with Frank Stallone, and Doug McClure was a little nuts, but interesting. Naturally, given the awfulness of the film, it led nowhere.
Which brings us to late 1988. I was so miserable and in such despair it wasn’t even funny. I’d hit a wall and I didn’t think there was any way out. I had never been that way in my life – I’d always been positive and fun. On that New Year’s Eve, I stood in the bathroom, looking in the mirror. And I remember saying, “You are a miserable son-of-a-bitch and you cannot continue like this. So, either kill yourself or change – change everything. Attitude, lifestyle, everything. And don’t just play at it – BELIEVE IT!” And right then and there I made the decision to just unburden myself of all the possessions I didn’t need – and I moved to Santa Monica into a one-bedroom apartment at The Shores, a high-rise building right across from the Santa Monica beach and next to the Venice boardwalk. It was rent-controlled and my beachfront apartment with a view of the ocean cost $582 a month. I made the decision to let go of my anger and my negativity. Just like that. The young fellow whose father owned the Shores (which is how I’d gotten in there), and my friend Alain (who’d been the producer on the film I’d just directed) started Bay Cities. We didn’t get paid anything, but boy did we create love for that label. I’d just turned forty and I could just feel positive energy for the first time since the beginning of the decade. And I BELIEVED it.
Six months later, David Wechter called me – he was working on a Fox show called Totally Hidden Video and they were way behind schedule and he needed someone with a great sense of humor who could produce and work with an editor to make the unfunny pieces they were shooting funny. He asked if I could come in that night and work on a bit until I finished. I came in at eight at night, met the producer of the show, met my editor, and was handed a huge number of tapes. David showed me a couple of bits that he’d cut together, so I could get the vibe. By two in the morning I had a rough cut complete with music, and the producer came back to the editing room, watched it and loved it. They hired me the next day and I was on the show for two-and-a-half years. As hard as it was, and it was hard – sixteen to eighteen hour days, every day for the next eight months – it changed my life. I was making incredible money every week, living in an apartment that was almost free, and even though I had no time for a personal life whatsoever, I was an integral part of making that show the success it was.
The next decade, the 1990s, was amazing for reasons you already know. And why? Because for the first time I wasn’t afraid to look round every corner, to see what new and interesting things might be waiting. Maybe they wouldn’t involve acting or writing or directing, at least in the way I’d been striving for. But had I not been adventurous, I would not have found the success I did as a record producer – the first REALLY successful thing I’d ever achieved, in terms of being at the top of the heap and the top of the game. And, wouldn’t you know, one day I was in the recording studio producing the cast album of I Do! I Do! when the phone rang – it was David Wechter telling me that Miramax/Dimension had just optioned our script The Faculty. Yes, the same script we couldn’t give away had just been optioned. And then it got made and for a year it was raining money, the kind of money one only dreams about.
The 2000s have been difficult – not just for me, but for almost everyone I know. I was ousted from a company I created and loved, I learned about evil, and nothing has really been easy. But I’d learned my lesson well from the 1980s – and I never got angry, I never went to a dark place for more than ten seconds – I’d just get in the shower and watch the water wash that crap away right down the drain. And despite the difficulties, creatively it’s been an amazing decade for me. I’m sixty-one now, and I’m hoping the next decade will be incredibly incredible for me and for everyone else.
I have since those dark days talked to several friends who were going through really bad patches – and I told them these stories and the key information that I tried to impart, and not in a facile way, was that it’s not enough to say you want things different – you really do have to BELIEVE. You can’t just say it – you have to believe it with all your might, and then just have a little patience.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because we should look round every corner to see what’s in the next section.
Yesterday was one of those long, long days filled with grunt work that had to be done. For example, I got up. And grunted. I then did the long jog, even though it was quite chilly out. I then resumed addressing packages for two hours. Then I did some errands, had a great lunch at Casa Vega, my first Mexican meal in over eight months, and then my helper arrived and we finished addressing all the packages, which took until seven o’clock. I then finally sat on my couch like so much fish and finished a motion picture on DVD entitled All That… For This? a French motion picture from France, directed by the marvelously marvelous Claude Lelouch. Like most of Mr. Lelouch’s films, it takes a very long time to finally realize what’s afoot, but that’s part of the fun of his films. He plays with time and with the editing and you’re never quite sure what the story is, but by the end everything comes clear and the journey there is usually quite rewarding. This is one of his 1990s films and I really enjoyed it – terrific actors, very funny and charming and a little rueful, too. The full-frame transfer on this region 2 DVD was decent. I’ve got five more Lelouch films here, and I’m looking forward to all of them.
Today, helper is coming back and we have to put postage on a LOT of packages. After that, I’ll lunch and proof and do a few errands and whatnot, and then I shall try to relax. The two new releases should be here on Monday and that will be a huge shipping day, because my intention is to get all the Kritzerland orders out that day, and then on Tuesday to get out all the big orders.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do the long jog (weather permitting), affix postage to packages, lunch, do errands, and watch a DVD or three. Today’s topic of discussion: There is currently a revival of West Side Story about to open in New York, directed by its author, Arthur Laurents. Most of the reports I’ve read are not good. So, why don’t we do our “wrong” casting for our very own haineshisway.com revival of West Side Story? So, let’s hear your most wrong casting suggestions. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, and don’t forget to look round every corner – there may just be magic lurking there.